Almost Final Curtain (7 page)

Even I knew that was a bad idea right now, so I just kept talking. “You used to say it kind of made you feel, uh, turned on dating one of the ‘enemy.’ I guess that’s not working so much for you anymore. Maybe we should take a, you know, break.”

It was hard saying “break” like that even without the “up.” Just the thought of not seeing Nik on a regular basis made my stomach drop. I’d miss him. Worse, I knew that there were so many other
normal
, uncomplicated girls waiting for just such an opportunity to pounce. I suspected once I let him go, I’d never see him again. But how could I blame him if he wanted something simple like that?

I blinked back the tears forming in my eyes, and busied myself with the seat belt.

His hand touched my thigh lightly. There wasn’t the instant magical awareness like with Elias, but my body tingled in a very physical,
human
response.

“Maybe we should.”

T
o my credit, I held it together until I got home. Mom was surprised to see me back before ten, but I offered little explanation beyond “I’ll tell you later.” Even that came out kind of quivery, so I had to dash up the stairs.

When I made it to the safety of my room, I shut the door and flung myself on my bed. There I let the floodgates go. I cried until I left wet spots on my pillow.

“I wish it were still fashionable to challenge him to a duel.” I nearly choked at the sound of Elias’s soft voice at the window. “Though it pleases me to see an obstacle removed, I never relish your pain. A curse upon him who casts aside your affection so callously.”

“It’s not like that.” I swallowed a sniff and palmed the tears from my cheeks. “It was a mutual decision. Kind of.”

“Do your tears bear false witness, then?”

It took me a second to figure out what he meant, and then I shook my head. “No, I’m crying because it still sucks to break up.”

“Indeed. And I still hate him.”

Despite everything, that brought a slight smile to my face. “You would no matter what, Elias.”

“True enough,” he agreed. The night had grown darker, but the streetlamp across the road illuminated just a hint of his pale, fine-boned cheek beneath a canopy of pine needles.

I was sure that if I was up for it, Elias would happily listen to me complain about Nikolai all night. I wasn’t in the mood. Plus I didn’t really have anything against Nik, not really. He was a vampire hunter’s apprentice. I was a vampire. End of story.

All I wanted to do was wallow. Maybe even stereotypically inhale a pint or two of mocha ice cream, and listen to sad, weepy music on my iPod.

“Hey, it’s really cool that you waited up for me and everything, but I want to, well, be—”

He didn’t let me finish. I heard rather than saw him shift on the branch as if readying to leave. “Of course, my lady, you must have time to grieve alone. Though my main intent was to watch for your safe return, I also came with a message. Your father wishes to speak with you about the matter of an engagement you broke. I’ll stall him as long as I can. Though you know your father—he won’t wait forever, and this is a matter of some urgency.”

I blew my nose in a Kleenex. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you give Khan permission to break her engagement?”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“It was foolish. Her marriage had been arranged to strengthen relations with the Southern region’s prince. The boy she loves is a loyal servant.” Elias spat the last words like they were such a foul concept that they were literally distasteful.

What did I care if Khan loved a servant or a human? “Look, it was romantic,” I said, feeling my heart go all wobbly again. A tear sneaked out of the corner of my eye.

“Ah, I understand,” I heard him sigh in the darkness. “Yet, I believe I shall let
you
explain your actions to your father, the prince.”

Given how willing Elias usually was to insert himself between me and any conflict, this probably meant Pop was pretty angry. “Whatever. I can handle Dad.”

I thought I heard a chuckle as he left in a rustle of pine needles.

A knock on my door made me jump. “Honey, are you talking on the phone to someone? Can I come in? What happened with Nikolai? You seem kind of upset.”

Kind of? Yeah, that was the understatement of the year. “Go away, Mom.”

“I don’t mean to intrude, but is everything okay with you and Nik? You came home awfully early. Did you fight about that vampire? You know I’ve told you not to have him around here.”

Technically, she’d said “in the house,” but I didn’t want to get into yet another fight about Elias and vampires tonight. “Mom, seriously, I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now.”

“Okay, honey. Should I bring up some hot chocolate or something?”

My lip trembled. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

Of course, I knew it was all part of her devious plan to get me to talk to her, but it totally worked.

In twenty minutes she was sitting on the opposite end of my bed. She sat cross-legged with her back against the metal frame and a steaming mug of cocoa resting on her knee. My laptop playing Taylor Swift’s “Teardrops on My Guitar” on a constant loop was the only illumination. I hugged the box of tissues to my chest as I tried to talk through the sobs. “It’s a break. Not a breakup. At least I hope so.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” she said, taking a sip. “Maybe he needs a little space.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be dumb, Mom. There must be, like, a thousand girls waiting to date the lead singer of Ingress.” She looked confused, so I added, “You know. Older girls.”

She adjusted her glasses. “What’s Ingress again?”

This was why Mom was rarely my confidante. If it didn’t involve million-year-old goddess cultures in Anatolia or wherever, she had no clue. “Nik’s band.”

“So this is about groupies? I thought you were fighting about vampires.”

“We
are
fighting about vampires; the groupies just make this whole thing that much worse. A break means the exclusivity clause is off, you know? Do you think a guy like Nik isn’t going to jump on the opportunity to—?” I stopped because I was stumbling into embarrassing territory, and I could see the lightbulb flicker to life behind Mom’s eyes.

“Cat around?” she said.

I was glad the dark of the room hid the heat on my cheeks. “Yeah, something like that. I don’t really want to talk about this anymore.” Mostly because I was afraid she’d start trying to explain birds and bees and condoms again.

To my surprise, Mom nodded. She stretched her legs, and then stood. “Try to get some sleep. There’s school tomorrow.”

“Okay. Uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie. Believe me—I understand that men are complicated. You and Nik will work things out. I have faith.”

I frowned at that. Hadn’t I just explained why we wouldn’t?

She headed down the stairs, with a little “It’ll be okay” wave. At least my awkwardness at talking with Mom briefly overwhelmed the ache in my heart. I snuggled under the comforter, and pulled it up over my head. I fell asleep humming the refrain of “Teardrops on My Guitar.”

 

 

I woke up to rain pouring from dismal gray clouds, matching my mood perfectly. Thankfully, Mom was already off at one of her college gigs, so I munched my cornflakes silently, watching the rain streaking like tears down the glass.

Our house was way too big for the two of us, but Mom had inherited it from the Parker witches. Grandma and Grandpa had been dead as long as I could remember, but we lived with their memories and leftover stuff inside a gigantic estate in the trendy Crocus Hill neighborhood. The Victorian was more than a hundred years old, and every burst of wind caused its joints to creak and crack. This morning, especially, with thunder rattling the windows, the rooms felt cavernous and huge. Lightning threw long, flickering shadows across the expanse of the dusty, unused parlor, down the golden hardwood hallway, to glitter on the glass beads of the heavy chandelier above my head. I sat in my customary chair in the corner of a dining room set that could easily seat twenty. The noise of my spoon clanking against the bowl was the only sign of human habitation.

With a heavy and resigned sigh, I padded on stocking feet to the kitchen. There, I put my dishes in the sink and then wandered out toward the door to get ready for school. I found my bright yellow raincoat in the closet by the door and an umbrella in a wicker basket near the coatrack. Shouldering my backpack, I headed off to the bus stop.

Umbrellas were so stupid. They never really kept the wind from sneaking under and spattering your face with wet. The fourth time it bent backward, I gave up on it and collapsed it. Thus, my hair was completely soaked by the time I found a seat on the bus next to a shy, first-grade girl with thick braids and frog eyes on the hood of her rain jacket. The weather subdued the usual raucous mood, and we bounced along glumly, everything smelling of moistness. The older kids’ gossip had already shifted to a new topic—apparently someone had done some kind of typical high school prank—and so, thankfully, no one asked after Nik or Ingress.

I read my history chapters as the bus shuddered from stop to stop.

When we got to Stassen, I waved good-bye to the little girl. She rewarded me with a big white smile.

Bea and Taylor waited by my locker. My Converses were completely soaked, and the rubber treads squeaked on the polished linoleum floor. When I saw my friends, I considered dashing into Mr. Knutson’s art room to hide, but Bea saw me and waved.

They both looked so happy; I felt miserable.

Taylor hopped up and down on her toes with excitement. “You didn’t text us!” she admonished. “How did it go with Nik last night?”

“Oh, great,” I said as casually as possible as I dialed the combination to the lock. “We broke up.”

Though I quickly buried my head in my locker, I could almost see their horrified double takes in the pregnant silence.

“You’re not serious,” Bea said. “This is a bad attempt at a joke, right?”

“I thought he got this gig with the musical just to hang out with you,” Taylor added. “Why would he break things off?”

I shoved the books I needed for the next couple of periods into my backpack, and then pronounced, “Boys are stupid.”

“Yes, but they’re so cute.” Bea smiled, the wheels clearly turning over her plan on how to make her move now that Nikolai was free. Bea had always had a crush on Nik.

“I thought older guys were supposed to be more mature,” Taylor said, sounding honestly confused. “He always seemed so into you. What changed?”

Bea and I exchanged a glance. She knew about the vampire/ hunter/witch problem, but Taylor was our nonmagical friend. All the mystical stuff was supposed to be secret.

So I shrugged and offered up something I hoped she’d understand. “His dad is Russian, you know. I guess they’re kind of traditional. There’s a lot of pressure for Nik to follow in his dad’s footsteps.”

Bea gave me an appreciative nod, like she was impressed at how accurate I could be without saying anything about vampires.

Taylor chewed on her lip for a moment, tugged thoughtfully on her
hijab
, and then came to the conclusion: “Man, I hate that family shit.”

I laughed a little. “Yeah, me too.”

“The musical is going to be way awkward,” Bea noted solemnly, as we made our way to first period.

Except, even updated to some kind of rock opera,
My Fair Lady
was
so
not my kind of production. What kind of part was there for a gangly, pasty girl with different-colored eyes? “I’m not even sure I’m going to try out,” I said, though my gut clenched at the mere thought. I’d never missed a show.

“What?” Bea couldn’t have sounded more offended. “Ana Parker, you are going to the ball! No boy is going to keep you from the audition!”

“Yes,” Taylor agreed, taking up the cause with enthusiasm. “The show must go on!”

“Besides,” Bea said, quite seriously, when we’d come to my classroom, “you know you’re the best singer of any of us”—which meant a lot coming from Queen Bea, who always considered herself a diva and the best of everything theatrical.

“Wow, Bea. You mean it?”

She flipped a wave of her dyed black and pink hair over her shoulder and said, “Of course. Besides, you can’t let down Stassen High just because some stupid boy hasn’t the sense to hold on to a good thing. Us theater freaks have to band together, you know.”

I smiled at her. “Great pep talk, BB. Can you give it to me again the day before auditions?”

“Silly goose, auditions
are
tonight!”

 

 

That news threw a wrench into the rest of my day.

I hadn’t planned on concentrating terribly hard during classes, since I’d expected to wallow over the breakup for at least a few days, but now my mind raced. What should I sing? Should I really go? Had Mom washed my lucky audition shirt?

The good news was I didn’t think about Nik at all; the bad news was that I was so distracted that I missed Mr. Feirria’s explanation of a really critical function in precalculus, and I completely botched a pop quiz in biology.

But by lunch I’d figured out that I was going to sing the “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” song, since I mostly knew the words already. I hated musical tryouts, actually. I thought of myself more as an actor than a singer. I tended to get stage fright when asked to sing, especially solo.

I was chewing on my sandwich, and my thoughts, when Bea pulled up the chair. “Hey,” she said with a sympathetic pat on my shoulder.

Suddenly, looking up into her big, brown, pity-filled eyes, all my Nik emotions came rushing back. Bread and cheese stuck in my throat. “Hey,” I managed to choke in return.

“He said it was your idea,” she said without preamble.